


Not Broken/Just Bent

by Jo (mindsofiron)



Series: The World is Bundled Up in You [2]
Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Breakup, F/M, HEA, hsau fic, hsau verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mindsofiron/pseuds/Jo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint and Tasha meet their first big bump in the road.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Broken/Just Bent

**Author's Note:**

> Shamelessly stealing the title and the loose plot from Pink's latest song (Just Give Me A Reason) bc I am shamelessly addicted to it.

She gives him the scare of his life the night he wakes up to find that she’s not beside him. They’ve just made love again in the middle of summer, abandoning their clothes to sleep nude next to each other. Summers don’t come easy because they’re at different colleges and only just managed to get jobs near each other and stay with each other, and they nearly never spend a moment apart.

 

The bed is empty beside him though, lingering body heat still staining spots and he pads out of the room in his boxers to look for her. She’s in the kitchen, back facing him as she clutches a drink of water and stares blankly ahead. He shuffles into the space, making sure she knows he’s there, and she tilts her head down slightly. He comes up behind her and winds his arms around her waist.

 

“Nightmare?” he murmurs into her hair. She nods and puts the glass down in the sink, water unfinished. Then, she clasps his hand and guides them both back upstairs where she crawls into bed and stretches her arms out for him, mute. He rolls in beside her and they curl up together.

 

Back in each other’s arms again, Clint finds it easier to breathe and drop to sleep.

 

-

 

She doesn’t sleep after she wakes. She’s dreamed of Ivan breaking out of jail and coming after Clint for everything he’s done. She thinks she’s not good for him – but she doesn’t want to leave him. He’s been nothing but amazing and strong, and that’s not to say she isn’t – she is, too, but sometimes he’s just unfailingly secure; her safe space.

 

She knows enough to know that he doesn’t want her to ever go away because of that again, either.

 

He shifts, murmuring in his sleep, and she strokes her fingers down his jaw and stares at his furrowed brow.

 

“Tasha,” he mumbles, and she curls closer and slips a hand into his, squeezing gently.

 

“No…Tasha,” she frowns at that; he sounds like he’s the one having a nightmare now. “Go away – leave me alone!”

 

She’s just confused at that, sitting up a little to look at him more clearly as she braces herself with a hand on his chest.

 

He seems to calm for awhile after that, and Natasha falls asleep wrapped up in him, but wakes again before dawn to him struggling out of her embrace. By the time she wakes, he’s out of the room, and she’s only caught the sight of his gaze – bright with frenzy, and the rough set of his jaw. Some clenches painfully inside her.

 

She pads in his shirt to the fire escape where he is, leaning against the door frame as he stares into the empty neighbourhood.

 

“Clint?” she asks softly, “Did you have a nightmare, too?”

 

He sighs heavily and turns to her at that, holding out a hand until she takes it and curls into his embrace. His chin is firm against the crown of her head.

 

She fists a hand in his shirt and presses her lips together.

 

-

 

The second time in happens, she’s planning to surprise him after being out an entire day. He’s napping on the couch, which is strange because he never sleeps there; they always share the bed. He jerks but doesn’t wake, mumbling again. She goes closer, crouching beside him and managing to catch something that sounds like, “Leave me alone! I don’t want you – ”

 

She bites her lower lip even as her stomach churns at those words, followed shortly by her name. Breathing gets hard even as she stands and leaves her belongings on the coffee table, going into the room and crawling under the covers. She doesn’t want to voice it; to give it tangible form, because what if it’s just paranoia? But she feels like the other shoe is going to drop and someone is going to tell her that this relationship – her only real happiness – has been a fluke all along, a fault of being in the desert for too many years; just her staring in the sandy distance to see the mirage of an oasis that disappears when you get too close.

 

-

 

He doesn’t tell her because she hasn’t asked and because he doesn’t want to cause unnecessary drama, but he’s been dreaming of people coming to take Tasha away from him. Sometimes it’s Ivan, sometimes it’s court people telling him that she belongs to his uncle – but she’s his now, she _said_ so, he wants to argue, but the words always stick in his throat like dry sand.

 

He’s aware that he talks in his sleep; doesn’t know how much she’s heard, but other than being a little distant she hasn’t said much, and sometimes she clings tighter to him when he holds her before they sleep, so he’s not too worried that she knows anything.

 

Maybe he also makes the mistake of assuming she knows him well enough to know what he’s thinking.

 

-

 

It’s always the insecurities that build up that kill you. It’s never a grain of sand, after all, always sandstorms or landslides; the results of a snowball effect and of conglomeration. Natasha doesn’t think she’s ever felt this unstable, and it scares her.

 

There are a few more times after that; her nightmares cease but his continue and she catches words like “Go” and “don’t want” and “please don’t”, with her name interspersed, and she never asks him because he’s just as sweet and she never knows what to make of these occurrences.

 

The first pebble comes at a picnic with their friends. They’re at the beach and he’s just made her a sandwich but when she bites into it, she crunches sand. It’s inevitable, really, and she starts to laugh, not really noticing Clint’s chagrin. It’s not a big thing and she doesn’t think much that she’s laughing so hard, but Tony quips, “Hey Hawkeye, don’t turn into the Sandman now!”

 

Him and his stupid pop culture references. They just make Natasha laugh harder at the thought of Clint dissolving into a pile of sand. Clint stands and leaves so abruptly that it shocks them all into silence, and she sits there, sandwich in hand, unable to process his behaviour enough to react.

 

-

 

The nightmares have taken a toll on his mental state; he feels inadequate and small and unable to be there for Natasha in the way she needs. He’s effectively managed to convince himself that she doesn’t want someone like him and that where they were the right fit; he’s become the wrong fit for her.

 

He knows it’s irrational but the stupid sandwich and the sand in it seals part of the deal for him, and he can’t deal with people and his own emotions so he walks away from the situation.

 

He goes back eventually, helping to pack up with a terse expression, and he’s silent the whole ride home. When Natasha slips her hand into his and squeezes gently as a question, he turns his face away, but clutches at her fingers like she’s a lifeline.

 

-

 

That night, she curls into him and presses her face into his neck. When he responds by wrapping himself firmly around her and breathing deep, she turns her face up to his and asks, “We gonna talk about it?”

 

He shakes his head and just touches their foreheads together, smiling tightly at her.

 

“Nah,” he says. So she drops it.

 

It doesn’t stop her from swallowing hard against the hard swell in her throat.

 

-

 

He doesn’t know why he doesn’t want to talk about it. Maybe because she’s always been such a confident, assured person, he thinks that the first sign of insecurity and neediness from him is going to make her dump him. It’s stupid, but it’s a thought that won’t go away.

 

-

 

She’s gone to get a glass of water in the middle of the night when she hears him hit the wall with a hand, and when she stumbles back to the bedroom he’s curled in on himself, still sleeping but muttering feverishly, “Why is it so hard for you to get it leave me alone, please – I swear, I don’t want – I never wanted this – please just go, leave – Tasha – ”

 

She backs away in shock, clutching the doorframe tightly. It’s the most he’s ever said, and she wonders why he hasn’t told her sooner.

 

-

 

The days after that are filled with futile gestures that feel increasingly pathetic and make her stomach twist in anticipation for the response – there’s usually none – and a lot of self-hatred at how much she doesn’t want to be without him. She can survive without him, she’s perfectly aware…she just doesn’t really want to anymore.

 

The last day of June comes, marking a week and a half of her curling beside him on the couch and feeling the unwitting tension in his body, him not finishing dinner or only making dinner for her and not himself, and then eventually not making dinner at all, him holing up in his room to “select courses for next semester”.

 

She accidentally intrudes into his personal space one day when she brings him coffee and carries her own cup of tea, wanting to sit beside him on the couch.

 

“Tasha, please just leave me alone for awhile,” he says, and it sounds hard and stiff; the same words from his fever dreams in a different amalgamation, and she tightens her hold on the cup so as not to drop it.

 

-

 

The moment he says the word he knows that they’ve come out wrong. He never wants her to leave him alone, he just needs a little space to sort out the frenzy of emotions that have been roiling and building in him like waves, but she’s been incredible and he wants her around; just not to see him like this. He clenches his jaw and doesn’t say more because he thinks anything else will only mar whatever he tries to fix. So he fixes his gaze on the computer screen in front of him instead until he is blind to the surroundings.

 

-

Back in the room, she pulls out the suitcase she brought to the city for the summer and starts to stuff her clothes in it, packing hurriedly. When she’s finally done, he’s sprawled across the couch sleeping, and something in her twinges again at the thought that he hadn’t even wanted to sleep with her, even if she’d been staying. She drops her head and lets herself out of the rented apartment quietly after pressing a soft kiss to his forehead for what she thinks is the last time.

 

She doesn’t cry because the tears don’t come, which is slightly surprising. She does still report to work, but she studiously arranges her shifts around Clint’s, and he doesn’t do anything about it. Part of her hurts to receive that confirmation; that he’s wanted her gone for a while now. No matter how upset she is and how many stages of grief she goes through, she can never summon the hell-burning anger that everyone speaks of. She just wants him back; terribly and intensely misses him, but she refuses to hinder his life.

 

One week into the separation it already feels like an eternity, and she’s spent the past two nights finally dry sobbing into her pillow because it smells nothing like him and the house reminds her of everything bad, without him around.

 

One and a half weeks into it, Tony comes round to the café.

 

“Red,” he says curtly, when she goes to hand him his coffee, “I didn’t see that coming. I thought you loved him.”

 

“I do,” she says quietly. She knows that Tony, for all his devil-may-care attitude, has picked up on the nuance. His eyebrows lift even as his mouth turns down.

 

“Then why leave him?”

 

“He wanted me gone,” she swallows and sighs abruptly, turning her face to the window.

 

“I don’t know exactly how bad your eyesight is – aren’t spiders supposed to have eight eyes? – but he’s fucking terrible without you. Doesn’t talk to any of us and barely eats enough to be alive. Your boss here didn’t tell you he hasn’t come to work for two days now? Whatever that is, Red, he sure as hell didn’t want you gone.” Tony downs the shot of espresso in one gulp. “Better talk to him. He’s shit.”

 

She can feel her heart hammering hard in her chest. Is that right? Does he not feel freer without her? But he wanted her gone – she heard him saying it in his dreams. She finishes her shift in a distracted frenzy and barely manages to snag her apron back on the hook before grabbing her back and flying down the street to their apartment.

 

-

 

When he woke that morning, she was gone. No good-bye note, nothing left of her clothing, his shirt draped across the back of a chair. He broke once, and she left. This is just proof that she’s had enough and will not deal with insecurity. He turns up for work with pallid skin and bloodshot eyes for the first three days, and then during the next two the manager tells him to go home early. He doesn’t bother to turn up on the other two, either, and just drinks his way through a six-pack of beer and crawls and showers his way through the subsequent hangovers.

 

Meals are instant noodles or crackers and water, showers are tepid or cold, sleep is fitful and not a good friend at all. He just wants her back, but she’s made it clear – by avoiding him so thoroughly – that she doesn’t want anything to do with him.

 

This is why, when the doorbell rings, he fully expects it to be Tony. He goes to it unkempt and with a slight shadow on his chin, and when he opens the door mindlessly, she’s standing there, eyes bright with tears and a little hysteria, cheeks flushed like she’s been running, hair bright as the day he met her.

 

“Tasha?” he croaks past a dry throat. Has he gone so far into delirium that his brain is feeding him images of the one thing he wants most, now?

 

-

 

Her heart breaks around the edges of his cracked and disused voice. He sounds terrible, hoarse and disbelieving.

 

She swallows past the ache. “Hi,” she greets hesitantly. When he steps back, she comes in and closes the door behind her. “How…how have you been?”

 

“Honestly?” his short laugh sounds more like a derisive bark at himself, “Horrible.”

 

His voice breaks on the second word, and he fists a hand in her shirt and pulls her to him, wrapping his firm arms around her and burying his face in her hair. She can feel him breathing deep as though he’s trying to breathe her in, and there’s a splinter of doubt under her skin but she wonders if there is cause for that at all. Her own arms fold around him.

 

“Why’d you leave?” he begs, breath hot against her shoulder, “I’m sorry, just give me a moment, I promise, then you can go.”

 

She can’t find her voice, and when she finally does, she hates how small and weak it sounds.

 

“Do you want me to go?” She asks, immensely afraid of the answer.

 

“No,” he sobs, clutching her tighter, tighter, “No. Please, stay.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” her voice is pitched low and soothing, and she manages to get him to the bedroom and under the covers, “We’re going to talk about this, but first you need to sleep, okay?”

 

“Stay with me,” he asks, craning his neck up to look at her, and she crawls in beside him and holds him close, her heart breaking with every pulse at the thought that a misunderstanding and her own insecurity has caused so much collateral damage.

 

She nods, unable to broach the lump in her throat to speak, and they curl up together. He pillows his head against her stomach, clutching her tight, and she winds her fingers through his hair and strokes gently.

 

Even if he sleeps sooner that she’s expected, she finds that she’s unable to follow. Something about the dark night and everything that has happened leaves her wondering what went wrong, and how they’re going to get through this – if they’re going to at all. She feels trapped under the earthy weight of the world and she can’t see him; but she has a feeling that he’s here with her in this instead of being a thousand miles away, back turned, like she initially thought.

 

The night gets cold and she’s only in a fitting button down, so she slips stealthily out of his arms, glancing at him as he snuggles into her warm spot. She strips out of her jeans and shirt and then goes to root through his cupboard. His shirt – the one that they jokingly call hers – is hanging by itself in a corner, faintly smelling of her but stiff in a small patch in front, probably from tears. Her heart clenches at the thought that she left it behind. She takes it and slips it over her head, layering it with one of his sweatshirts.

 

She’s about to turn back to the bed and crawl back under the sheets when he starts talking again, “Tasha no, not Tasha. Please don’t touch her. Please don’t make her leave me.”

 

It’s the most coherent of dreams that she’d been witness to, and suddenly things look a lot different from before she left.

 

Before she can make it back, he jerks awake and looks around, eyes haunted and gaze sharp, her name a jarring shout in the air.

 

“I’m here,” she swallows tightly, voice strained as she hurries over with a frown knitting her brow, “I’m here, hey,”

 

He grabs for her as soon as she reaches the side of the bed, and she tumbles in onto him as he heaves against her shoulder.

 

“I thought you went away,” his words are fast and feverish, his hold the same, as though he’s trying to burn their skin together. It feels like lightning on a beach fusing clumps of sand together; all their memories together crystallise in this one desperate moment, their feelings muddled and yet as firm and unshakeable as sea glass.

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” she promises. He nuzzles his face against her, nudging the collar of the shirts aside and pressing his nose to her skin, breathing deep.

 

Some time in the night, he tips them backwards and she falls asleep secure and warm in his arms.

 

-

 

He wakes as though he is opening his eyes underwater; they sting and smart but he sees the red tendrils of a siren’s hair sprawled across his sheets and his chest. He’s pretty sure it’s an illusion, like all sirens, until she shifts in his arms to brace herself on an elbow against him and offers him a tentative, unsure smile.

 

His grip tightens unwittingly, and she raises a hand to stroke at his face, tenderness lighting her face like rays of the sun.

 

“Tasha?” he croaks. He feels like the previous night was a dream.

 

“Hi,” she greets, leaning forward and touching her nose to his lightly. There’s a sort of hesitance and trepidation in her actions, as though she isn’t sure if he still wants her like he used to. Before she can pull away, he tangles a hand in her hair and tugs her close, fusing his mouth to hers and kissing her breathless.

 

She kisses him back just as thoroughly, but then she pulls away and stops him from following with a hand cupping his jaw and she says, “Wait, wait,” in a voice that is small and longing as her thumb rubs against his stubble, “We need – I need…I need to talk about this.”

 

His expression falls. Here it comes, then, how they’re not working out and how he needs to learn to live without her because they can’t be inseparable forever, and how she has to leave him because they don’t fit, and how –

 

“What have you been dreaming about?” she asks.

 

He frowns, catching her hand in his and stroking her palm with his thumb.

 

“People…taking you away. Telling me that you aren’t mine to have.”

 

“Not about breaking up with me?” Her head is bent as she seeks to meet his downcast gaze, but he jerks his head up, shock lacing and weighting every exhalation.

 

“What?” he returns hoarsely, “No…never – I – you’re the greatest thing that I’ve ever had and I…feel like I’m not enough for you.” He lets his voice trail off at the end of that.

 

 

-

It’s her turn to tighten her grip and bite her lip as though there’s a whole tsunami in her threatening to break out.

 

“Because you…talk, in your sleep, and I kept hearing you tell me to go away and leave you alone.”

 

She watches as dismay clouds his lovely eyes and shadows his face, and he looks away, as though he’s blaming himself for not talking to her.

 

He shifts so he’s sitting up against the headboard, and she settles into his lap, still relearning his face through touch, as though she can absorb his defeat and exhaustion by osmosis.

 

“I never – I wouldn’t ever ask that,” is all he manages.

 

“Yeah, but I got insecure…and I thought it was finally ending – because I never believed I deserved happiness and you’ve brought me nothing but joy.” She pauses to gather her words, “And that day you told me you needed to be alone.”

 

His broken gaze cuts right through her.

 

“I meant…because I didn’t – I was beginning to think you didn’t need me, I felt so incapable and incompetent of being the person you needed me to be…”

 

Her fingertips cover his lips gently; her eyes are questing.

 

“I just need you,” she makes herself say it because he needs to know; it needs to be said, after everything that they’ve done to each other. They built sandcastles and when those were washed away they let themselves think that it was an end instead of a new beginning gifted by natural causation.

 

“So you aren’t breaking up with me?” he asks, brows still furrowed, tongue licking at his lips nervously. She shakes her head in vigorous protest and leans forward to catch his mouth with her own as she promises, “I will never,” a kiss, “Never,” a nip at the corner of his mouth, “Leave you, unless you tell me you want me to.

 

-

 

He shakes his head before covering her lips with his, making up for all the days he hasn’t been able to greet her with a kiss or hold her against him as he sleeps.

 

When they finally run out of breath she pulls back, almost shy – except shy is too coy for Natasha, and she slips out of his arms to wash up. He lets her go after a brief, firm tug on her fingers.

 

They spend the rest of the day, and the next, being tentative around each other. It’s not a bad hesitance; it’s relearning and re-charting old territories and communicating more, and learning to understand and trust each other instead of jumping to conclusions.

 

Eventually they settle into a new routine that is familiar but also feels fresh. When they finally make love again, the first time in a month, it hasn’t been so long that they’ve forgotten how, but it’s been long enough that Clint feels at awe and being granted priviledge to this again; to her body and her heart and her vulnerability. They come together like a storm in the middle of nature, building and building until it rains and washes away all the debris of an implosion, until they can look at everything that is past and say that they have come out stronger, braver than before.

 

In one of the days soon after they’ve sorted things out and she’s back in the apartment with him, he comes to her where she’s staring at the city from the balcony and presses himself against her back.

 

“Promise we’ll always talk about things like this?”

 

“Yes,” she returns, covering his hands in his and craning her neck to press a kiss to his cheek. He laughs because he feels free and strong, and it’s like falling in love with her again, feeling like they can truly see forever; can really take on anything that comes up against them. He turns and presses a swift kiss on her lips because he feels brave and happy, and this, this is his perfect moment: when he can press against her skin and just breathe her in.

  
  



End file.
